If you knew me in high school, you would’ve never guessed that I would join a sorority. I never saw myself as the type of girl who fit into the “sorority lifestyle,” from the way I dressed to the things I liked. I assumed that most of Greek life found on any college campus delved no deeper than the stereotypes found in movies: overly-aggressive chanting, the latest frat-srat gossip, and a sea of blonde hair and Lilly Pulitzer.
And maybe, somewhere, these things are true – but not at Dickinson, and certainly not where I found my second home. The first wave hit me as I went through recruitment week my freshman year, and I really began to notice how diverse the sisters of my sorority were. Not just in appearance, but in ways that you would never know about simply by looking at them: where they were from, what their majors were and what they were passionate about. After all, it’s passion and diversity that really glues a sisterhood together – not just what you have in common, but also what you don’t.
The second wave hit me in the months after I was officially a sister, and it was then that I began to realize just how much I actually enjoyed the stereotypical activities of a sorority girl. I harbored a secret obsession with crafting, looked forward to wearing my letters around campus and even developed a fondness for the classic “sorority squat.”
It’s an amazing state of mind to feel like you belong somewhere that encourages you to be your most authentic self in a setting that matches your passions and values with the organization. At no point did I feel like I was giving up any part of me to replace it with something that people wanted me to be; like watercolors mixing together, everything flowed exactly the way it was meant to, and resulted in something beautiful.
I still don’t wear Lilly Pulitzer – and I probably never will – but it’s exactly this meshing of individual passions and collective values that makes each sorority stand out from the next one. Find a sisterhood that embodies this over anything else and you will be able to flourish as a person, only helped and strengthened by your life-long sisters.